Puppet on a Lonely String
by Y.K.Willstone
Summary: Regulus Black died young, so did his brother, they never had very much in common; one a Slytherin the other a Gryffindor, one was the golden boy and the other the dark sheep of the Black family. But what if they had more in common than meets the eye? Title from Coldplay's Viva La Vida


Regulus Black didn't like labels. He didn't like the way that they had a tendency to cloud the judgement of most people; muggleborns were called mudbloods, something nasty to inspire hate.

Labels, he thought, tie you to a boat that would sink in the eyes of many before you'd even got it out of the docks. Sirius hadn't minded labels - blood traitor - he'd laughed at them behind his parents' backs, he'd been strong in front of his brother. But there were some nights that Sirius spent in his room when he forgot to close the door slightly and Regulus heard him cry.

Regulus hated labels.

He'd never thought about what he identified as, not really. Until, that was, he looked at himself and thought back to the times he'd done things in the dark, and how it wasn't only girls he'd picture in the heat of the moment. Then, he'd started to think about it.

Sirius left a week before Regulus came to the conclusion that he might be gay, and that scarred him. And then he thought about it some more, while he'd never gone out with a girl he'd certainly never thought that they weren't pretty. And the way their bodies moved when they walked, and the way their hair fell.

If he thought these things beautiful and would go out with a girl then he couldn't be gay, could he? It was clearly just a phrase he'd been going through.

A few months later however, in the halls of Hogwarts castle, he'd caught himself looking at one of his dorm mates (who was being avoided like the plague due to his own 'coming out' the month before) and thought that there was something there for sure that he liked.

Just as much as he liked girls.

Just as much as he liked the way girls looked, he liked guys.

Not all guys though, Regulus realised, never all guys. Just like with girls, there were things he found attractive in guys.

But he didn't want to give up looking at girls, he liked them, hell he'd made out with Maisy Lockhart once at Christmas time when they'd smuggled a bottle of whisky into the Slytherin dorm room, and had been playing truth or dare. When she asked to kiss him again the next day, he'd enjoyed that too.

He didn't want to have to give up liking girls, he liked liking them too much to give it up to be gay. Which meant that he liked girls too. It wasn't until he read Sirius' diary (something he'd accidentally left behind when he moved out) that he finally found the word.

Bisexual.

Bi.

At first it didn't seem to fit him. The idea that perhaps it was all a phase, perhaps he really did like only girls and how he looked at guys was something that could be kept between him and the darkness of night, perhaps he could hide away. That was the answer, he thought, hide it all away and then nobody would ever know what really lurked in his mind.

What nobody knows couldn't hurt them.

But then Sirius had finally gotten over his nerves and asked Remus out (his diary was full of wining about how much he loved the 'damned werewolf') and had gone around looking happy as Larry when the other boy had accepted the invitation on a date.

Regulus had had to look away from them when he walked down the corridor, he didn't want anyone to know that, while he liked girls, he still liked guys. He realised that he'd been thinking that way for a while - don't let anyone know, don't let anyone in, don't let them see.

He was bi.

He decided one night that enough was enough, there were somethings, he decided, that he couldn't lie to himself anymore. He needed a label, not to fit in with everybody else of that label, not to be categorised by society, not for other people to judge him by. He needed it to categorise himself by.

That was the night he stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Trying to get the words out of his lips, trying speak the words.

He was bisexual.

It took him an hour before he could say it. Afterwards in his room, salty tears still running down his face, he rolled it around his tongue, making it his own, suggesting it to himself and accepting himself for the first time.

When he went back to school, he expected everything to be different, he expected there to be a flashing light over his head saying things such as "QUEER! QUEER! OVER HERE!" But nobody seemed to notice his change in personality really.

The first guy he ever got a crush on was James Potter, stupid really, the boy was all muscle with very little brain. But he was very good looking, and very, very good on a broom.

He was also straight.

And Sirius' best friend.

He'd forced himself to get over it.

Nobody knew his deepest secret.

And then nobody became, almost nobody.

-ooo-

"All right there Reggie?" It was Sirius, I ignored him, but he continued "not in a compartment with your little Death Eater friends, plotting against muggleborns and scum like me?"

It was the Hogwarts Express, maybe a year after that night in the bathroom, it was Sirius' last year at Hogwarts. I was saving the compartment for when my friends stopped terrorising the third year Gryffindor who'd given them the "evil eye" on the platform.

"No," I said, really too tired to argue properly "just keeping the seats warm." Wrong choice of words, I could see the way that Sirius was going to go after that statement.

"Oh, so your the servant in the merry gang," he mocked me "they tell you to jump and you ask how high while doing it?"

"That sounds rather uncomfortable," I remarked.

"But you'd still manage to do it."

There was a silence between us, we were separated by the anger we felt to one another - I for his abandonment when I needed him the most. He, for my following of principles he didn't think could ever be seen as right.

I understand that now, now the anger's past.

"So where's the abomination?" Which was my way of asking after his boyfriend. I may point out that I was calling Remus Lupin an abomination due to the curse he suffered of being a werewolf.

My brother didn't understand the idea.

"You're a homophobic piss-head you know?" I was shaken by the comment, realising my mistake I tried to phrase it differently.

"I-I meant -"

"I know perfectly well what you meant." Sirius was furious "Merlin, I thought being related to me had got it into your thick skull that liking people of the same gender isn't disgusting, or beneath anyone." Sirius looked betrayed. I could feel the anger pooling within me.

How often had I had to keep it inside me that I was different to everyone else? That I knew only too well the trials the liking somebody of the same gender could be? There was, however, something different about Sirius. He was out and proud, damn the people who thought it was wrong.

Sirius would stand up to them.

I, on the other hand, was so far in the closet that I practically living in Narnia (a good book series I stumbled across sometime after Hogwarts).

I hated how Sirius thought he knew me, thought that he was the only one that could go through everything he'd been through. That the way he thought his perceptions of the world were the world in its entirely. He started yelling again but paused a second before to cast a silencing spell on the compartment.

"If you think I'm going to let that one slide Regulus, you've got another thing coming," in all honesty I'd never riled my brother up so much in my life - that was Mother and Father's job, not mine.

"I didn't mean it that way," I tried to get out the real meaning behind my words, but he wasn't listening.

"Of course you did, what else could you have meant?" Sirius paused for a second, probably not expecting a response to the question. I took my chance.

"I meant that his blood is tainted by the venom that goes through his veins!"

"Venom! What do you mean?"

"For Merlin's sake Sirius, he is a bloody werewolf!" As soon as it was out of my mouth I realised my mistake, Sirius hadn't mentioned it to me himself per say. Nobody knew of Remus' condition, I suspected, other than Remus' friends, Snape and myself. And I'd only found out from reading his diary.

"So you told Mum and Dad I suppose?" Sirius put on a mockingly high voice "Mother, mother, Sirius has been snogging a werewolf, a male werewolf."

"I would never judge you for loving someone of the same gender Sirius." I shut my mouth, mentally cursing, it seemed after over a year of not talking to my brother, my tongue was looser than it should have been.

"Why not?" Scoffing Sirius lent against the compartment door "Have you been the Slytherin slut or something?" I flinched at the insult. Anger once again pooled in my body, I clenched my fist.

"No, but I know you're a slut to any girl or boy in Hogwarts. How many times in the last few years have you cheated on your boyfriend?" I spat the last word, my anger having got the better of me, regretting my comment less than a second later. He ran at me and dragged me down to the floor. We wrestled for a minute. Him pushing me to the ground, me hitting, punching, prodding so I could get up.

Eventually we collapsed and separated. Lying side by side on the floor we took a few seconds worth of breath.

"Where did we go wrong?" Sirius asked quietly.

I didn't answer. I didn't know what went wrong. Or, more probably I did, but I didn't want to admit it. All I could say was: "I could never hate you being with another guy Sirius."

He scoffed, "You have a bloody funny way of showing it."

"I'm bi."

There was a pause "What?"

I struggled to explain myself. Almost immediately wishing I hadn't spoken at all, but my halting explanations were stopped by Sirius' doglike laugh.

"Mum and Dad's golden boy is as much of a disappointment as I am." He was hysterical, laughing, tears rolling down his face.

"I've not told them, nobody knows."

"Of cause you wouldn't. Because your just too scared to admit that your not the perfect son. That there's something about you that they wouldn't like if they found out." His words were saturated with venom, sharp as a blade. There was a pause "What. Did you want me to tell you that it'll be okay? Nothing's okay at the moment, hate to break it to you but there's a war going on, and you're on the wrong side."

"Stop it!" I yelled, getting up from the floor, Sirius sat up. "All you ever did was condemn me for being a Slytherin, all you want is to be able to hate me once you realised that I have ambition!"

"Ambition at the cost of everything else is it?" Sirius was standing now, he was about to continue when voices could be heard coming down the corridor. The others were coming.

"You've got to leave!" I snapped, Sirius only nodded, cheeks flushed from the argument.

Years later I realised that I should have left with him. Maybe if I had we'd both be alive, a lot more people would be alive.

Maybe the Order would have had another member, one who knew the inner workings of the Death Eaters and knew their weaknesses. There would have been a fight, or two, or three, but eventually the Death Eaters would realise that there was nowhere to run.

I'd have helped the Order learn about the Horcruxes, wouldn't have gone in to get the locket alone. I wouldn't have had to drink the green elixir on my own with only a house elf for company. I wouldn't have died there; breathing in the black water of that midnight lake.

Time wouldn't have left me there, wouldn't have stalled the decaying process to the point of perfect preservation. I would have died fighting, maybe living to see the war over and the final defeat of the Dark Lord.

I might have fallen in love, man or woman, did it matter?

I might have had kids. Sirius and Remus might have to.

There would be time for all the things I never got to do.

I wouldn't have had to watch Albus Dumbledore go mad from the very elixer that slowly killed me, or be compelled to go to the edge of the green waters myself to pull him and the boy down to the depths with me.

Mindlessness, empty brain space, blank memories erased by so many years under the water. I was closest to the pair when the world lit on fire.

Fire, how long had it been since I saw a flame that high. If I'd gone with Sirius I'd never had forgotten what heat felt like. I wouldn't have had to pull myself out of the water, saturated and suddenly decaying.

There wouldn't have been a moment's pause as I watched my body start the process it had so long been denied the privilege of. I could feel the water in my lungs, heavy, smothering, choking. The darkness I had avoided for so long coming to get me. Catching onto me and refusing to let go.

This isn't the world in which I went with my brother.

\- The End -

Author's Note: This turned... dark. I started writing this during the summer holidays, and it's now almost the start of the next summer holidays. For those of you who wanted an update on the Lost Potter I will be working on that, and a couple of other things, during the summer holidays while hoping that I get into the universities that I applied for.

This came from a challenge that I didn't complete. I always thought that there would have been more to the story of Regulus than was told and I wanted to test myself out with a trip into the tragedy genre. I hope that you enjoyed and that you will leave a comment saying what you think (feedback is always nice and I'll use any flames to roast my enemies.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that I do not own Harry Potter. I just fiddle with the characters (no euphamisms meant).


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